By – Shreyanshi Jha
Through the streets, you go and of course, you judge people but those faces do not tell you the amount of pressure these people carry. While observing people you will see some are lost somewhere in their neverland possibilities are that maybe these lands could be their happy space but it could also be their hiding space in these crowds. Next time you travel note down people and their expression you will surely understand these lines.
There are days you feel grey and blues. You submerge yourself inside the dark monotonous valley where your minds take you and make you still. You could hardly realize when the winds around you take you to that state of mind which people attribute to being overthinking but hardly have they known you have attributed this land as your home of mind where colours are taken far. (Through the visuals of mind of an over-thinker)
What is depression?
Depression is a mental illness which affects your thoughts and the way you feel. Depression makes you feel low and you lose interest in activities which once you used to enjoy.
Symptoms:-
- Feeling sad
- Loss of interest in activities once enjoyed
- Change in appetite
- Trouble sleeping
- Loss of energy or increase fatigue
- Feeling guilty
- Feeling worthless
- Difficulty thinking
Thoughts of death or suicide (Depression is treatable )Highlighting the last point was just to show there at that point people lose their battle with depression. The point when suicide crosses the mind, the situation is obnoxious for the person. The person if not approached in a manner which makes him speak up then it’s gone the chance you can save him is gone.
Now let’s discuss a poetess Sylvia Plath who suffered through depression and just shaved off her life. Suicide for her was the last option, although the world deserved more of her works.
Sylvia Plath
Life story
Plath was born in 1932 in Boston. Sylvia published her first poem at the age of eight; her father died that same year. In real life, Plath’s first suicide attempts were in 1953. She crawled underneath her house and took her mother’s sleeping pills and said later she was “blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion.”
At the University of Cambridge she met Ted Hughes, he was a poet too. They married a few months later and found a mutual interest in astrology and the supernatural and mutual admiration for each other’s work.
In 1962, Plath discovered that Hughes was having an affair and they separated. Later that year she experienced a creative outburst and wrote books worth of poems. In February 1963 she took her own life when she was only 30. Her novel Bell Jar was all about how uncertain people are about themselves. Sometimes in chasing what they want they have to lose all that they possess.
Now assume, if she must have not ended her life on that note, how beautiful it would have been? We could be flourished with more of her idea of feminism. Her poetic expression was so clear in itself that how her relationship towards suicide was increasing day by day. Now what we are left is that if somebody could have identified it and stopped her. Often it’s too late when we discover the mental pain of the person.
It takes something very miserable to happen which awakens our spirits. We, humans, are selfish even every good deed we do is a selfish one. “Be there for people if you want them to be with you in times of your hardness”.
Why is it hard to accept depression:-
Yesterday, I heard one family saying we are modern our child can share everything with us. You know what their child never spoke about?, the mental stress he has been going through. The reason why he never revealed his mental pain is very simple because mental pain is not even pain for his family.
This is the case many at times we just don’t want to confess the agony of his mind.
Log kya kahenge (what will people say).
This society has pressurized us so much. When you get the feeling of “log kya kahenge” tell your mind “logon ka kaam h kehna” trust me your body is your what other think of you will hardly matter but what you think is more important. When you bottle up things or just sweep your feelings under the rug of your mind the problem starts. Society will not be there when you will be drowning in the ditch that you have created for yourself.
“Ab jab baat nikal hi gayi hai toh dur talak jayegi” (if the talk about society has come lets dive in more deeper) many of you must have seen 13 Reasons Why, a controversial one but you know who was Hannnah’s murderer this very society.
“It’s all in your head”.
Oh wow! Thanks for making us aware. So we know it’s in our head but you are just making more complications by saying this, if that aid is not received in your voice then don’t use this. Every person somehow knows this but the difficult part comes here accepting it. People with just this one statement feel that their part is over but what they actually did is to make a depressed person more depressed. If healing is not what you can provide please don’t say.
“Yeh bhi koi baat hai jo itna soch rahe ho”(is this even a thing to ponder upon)
Oh! May be overthinking doesn’t exist. Overthinking is something which leads to take your sleep from you. Please for once you all can give a consoling voice, a shoulder and your time to listen all of those insecurities that person is going through.
Suicide anyhow is not an option
To end up life is not an option.
“You don’t feel like talking, write your journals pour it out on paper. You don’t feel like doing anything, don’t do just rest. It’s normal, some days are sparkling like those shiny sunny days, some are like grumpy rainy days. Both of them are beautiful anyhow, you are beautiful anyhow.”
Accept your mental illness
Please seek help before it’s too late. There are people who are always there to listen. Visit psychiatrists open the cap of bottle where your feelings are all bumped in, it has to get out. It is important for people to let out the feelings caged up in bottle because everyone deserves a better life. Some can be the Sylvia Plath but with a change in the story, the one who survived the atrocities of her mental illness.
Love yourself
The most important weapon to fight out the illness of your mind is to show concern for yourself. You are the best that can be created. People need to see your life journey, read by your own self and not your suicide note on that table. Embrace yourself because you are one of your kind. Maybe you are messy but you know what, that mess will be adored, if you adore yourself.
Mental illness is a grave issue. If you just compare your sadness with depression that’s wrong there’s difference in both. Both of them need to be addressed, talk to someone or just write it down. People will be highly obliged by listening your story but the one which had an ending where you survived and made an example. It’s hard to agree but worth trying trust me.
Daksha 